So build a LotR MOC in set style... I think a great line of LotR sets would be Lord Of The Rings Architecture, the serious and classy vibes correspond well to the feel of The Lord of The Rings. Plus, LotR has some amazing buildings in it: Barad Dur, Bag End, The Prancing Pony, Minas Tirith, and probably more I'm forgetting. These would be striking and elegant sets, with many of the things that make the current Architecture sets good except more so.

I decided to build Orthanc, The Black Tower of Isengard. It's iconic but not overly complex, and just a great source for a Lego model. Big thanks to my teammate Nick Vas for the box art edit, he even edited in diagrams! Set will be sold for $59.99, debuting April 1st. ;)

Orthanc played a key roles in The Lord Of The Rings, most The Two Towers, the title of which is often thought to refer to Orthanc in part. It's where Saruman confronted Grandalf and where Gandalf was subsequently imprisoned. When the Ents marched on Isengard and destroyed it only Orthanc stood, and Saruman took refuge there.

There stood a tower of marvellous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain.
óJ.R.R. Tolkien

To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!